A refrigerator unit is an apparatus intended to store food items at low temperatures. The refrigerator unit may store foods in a frozen or refrigerated state according to the type of food intended to be stored.
The interior of the refrigerator unit is cooled by cold air that is constantly supplied. The cold air is constantly generated through a heat exchanging operation with a refrigerant based on a refrigeration cycle. The cycle includes a process of compression-condensation-expansion-evaporation. The cold air supplied to the inside of the refrigerator unit is evenly transferred by convection to store food and drink items within the refrigerator unit at a desired temperature.
In general, a main body of the refrigerator unit has a rectangular, hexahedral shape which is open at a front surface. The front surface may provide access to a refrigeration chamber and a freezer chamber located within the body of the refrigerator unit. Further, hinged doors may be fitted to the front side of the refrigerator body in order to selectively open and/or close openings to the refrigeration chamber and the freezer chamber. In addition, a number of drawers, racks, shelves, storage boxes, and the like may be provided in the refrigeration chamber and the freezer chamber within the refrigerator unit that are configured for optimally storing various foods and items within a storage space inside the refrigerator unit.
Conventionally, refrigerator units were configured as a top mount type in which a freezer chamber is positioned above a refrigeration chamber. Recently, bottom freeze type refrigerator units position the freezer chamber below the refrigeration chamber to enhance user convenience. In the bottom freeze type refrigerator unit, the more frequently used refrigeration chamber is advantageously positioned at the top so that a user may conveniently access the chamber without bending over at the waist, as previously required by the top mount type refrigerator unit. The less frequently used freezer chamber is positioned at the bottom.
However, a bottom freeze type refrigerator unit may lose its design benefits when a user wants to access the lower freezer chamber on a more frequent basis. For example, prepared ice that is stored in the freezer chamber may be a popular item accessed frequently by a particular user. In a bottom freeze type refrigerator unit, since the freezer chamber is positioned below the refrigeration chamber, the user would have to bend over at the waist in order to open the freezer chamber door to access the ice.
In order to solve such a problem, bottom freeze type refrigerators may include a dispenser configured for dispensing ice that is provided in a refrigeration chamber door. In this case, the ice dispenser is also positioned in the upper portion of the refrigerator unit, and more specifically is located above the freezer chamber. In this case, an ice maker for generating ice may be provided in the refrigeration chamber door or in the interior of the refrigeration chamber.
The ice maker may include an ice making assembly having an ice tray for making ice (e.g., ice cubes) (hereinafter, referred to as an ‘ice tray’), an ice bucket (hereinafter, referred to as a ‘bucket’) for storing the ice, and a transfer assembly for transferring the ice stored in the bucket to the dispenser.
The ice making assembly may include a heater. The heater may emit heat for purposes of separating the ice from the ice making assembly. Specifically, ice making recesses may be formed in an upper surface of the ice tray, and water stored in the recesses is frozen into ice. The heater may emit heat to slightly melt the ice, such that the ice can be easily separated from the ice making recesses
However, the heat emitted by the heater interacts with cold air that is supplied to the ice tray, and a heat exchange between the heat and the cold air is performed, which reduces the cold air available for freezing water to ice. As a result, both the cooling efficiency and the ice separation efficiency are lowered.
In addition, exhaustion of limited energy resources and environmental pollution have become more serious issues, and correspondingly improvement of the cooling efficiency of refrigerator units has been continuously requested.
What is needed is an efficient way to make ice within a refrigerator unit.